Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  If Salvador was out to frame King, it would have been so easy to do a better job. He could say that King borrowed a bullet from him. Instead, he said he didn’t know if King took any of his bullets or not—which was no doubt the truth. If framing King was on Salvador’s mind, he could have said that King was acting “strange and nefarious” at the gun range. But he didn’t say that. He said there was nothing noteworthy about King’s behavior. What kind of a frame job was that? And it wasn’t like Robert Salvador was incapable of being crafty. He’d hung around with Michael King because he thought it would help him get work. He could scheme—so there was every reason that if he’d set out to frame King for murder, he would have shown signs of craftiness. But he didn’t. He showed hesitance at first, followed by full disclosure.

  Lon Arend continued to argue against the closing argument the defense had yet to make. They would argue different scenarios: One, Michael King was never at the murder scene, and there was a “mountain of evidence” refuting that. Two, Denise Lee and King had consensual sex, and someone else then killed her. That couldn’t be true. Third scenario was that, okay, King abducted and raped Denise, but he didn’t kill her. Someone else did it, while standing near King’s car. So which would they believe? That King did it and did it alone, or that the defendant would voluntarily leave her two children so she could go to King’s house and have torturous S/M rough sex with him? Was she still playacting the whole S/M scene when she pounded on the window while next to Jane Kowalski’s car? When she cried with terror into the phone? Was Harold Muxlow’s shovel obtained for some reason other than to dig a grave? He said it was to get a tractor unstuck, and that was a lie. Was there a third option? No. Did the jury believe that Michael King and Robert Salvador had a conversation at the gun range: “Hey, I’ve always wanted to shoot somebody.” “Cool, meet me off Plantation Road at six-thirty.” The prosecutor asked the jury to recall what was said during the defense’s opening statement. “I have a transcript,” Arend said. “It says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, that this case is simply a “question of identity, that the evidence will show on January 17, 2008, a person played with a gun and fired a single shot. The evidence will also show that the person who fired the single shot was not Michael King. The evidence will show King did not fire the shot that ended life.” ’ ”The prosecutor paused to let that sink in. Didn’t the statement of the defense seem ridiculous, now that they’d heard the evidence? “I submit to you to hold them to the statement they made.”

  The defense objected vehemently at that moment and demanded a mistrial. Mr. Arend was trying to confuse the jury, the defense said, as to who bore the burden of proof in an American criminal trial. The defense didn’t have to prove a damn thing. That was the prosecution’s job. Judge Economou overruled the objection.

  Arend continued: “You’ve heard the evidence they claim illustrates and demonstrates their client’s innocence. You’ve heard it all. They asked some questions of the crime scene technicians. All of the evidence might have been ‘contaminated. ’ You heard that. Maybe the contamination was accidental, a mix-up in a transfer, or intentional, police officers looking to railroad Michael King. Is that what you think happened, ladies and gentlemen? That all of the evidence is contaminated? I submit to you that it is contaminated, all right, but not by law enforcement that was diligently wearing gloves, caps, and suits. It was contaminated by Michael King! Michael King contaminated that Winnie-the-Pooh blanket when he left his sperm on it. Michael King contaminated the victim when he left his sperm on her.”

  To suggest that someone other than the defendant killed Denise Lee, Arend maintained, was a forced, imaginary, and speculative doubt. Not a reasonable doubt.

  Arend called the shovel “one of the most vivid examples of premeditated murder that I can recall during my time seeking justice. It was, by definition, murder in the first degree.”

  Michael King did it. He did it alone. His white shirt, with or without blood on it, along with his nine-millimeter gun, were at the bottom of some pond, someplace, where they might never be found. He placed the gun to Denise Lee’s head and he pulled the trigger. He consciously decided to do it, and he did it. He also met the criteria for the most extreme charge by committing the murder during another criminal act—in this case, kidnapping and sexual battery. The prosecution also proved that he stole Denise Lee away from her home and raped her. Through testimony, it had been established beyond doubt that Michael King, before killing her, raped her. His semen was found inside her bruised vagina. She had defensive wounds. There was an indication of choking by ligature.

  Arend told the jury that the defense had rights—the right to question the evidence, to a vigorous defense, even to accuse another person of committing the crime if they had the evidence to back it up. But to merely accuse someone else out of the blue, they didn’t have the right to do that.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Thursday, January 17, 2008, was the worst day of Denise Amber Lee’s life, the last day of her life. Wednesday, August 26, 2009, was the worst day of [Robert] Salvador’s life, accused without evidence of murder. Today, August 28, 2009, is the day Michael King will be held accountable for the rape and murder of Denise Lee.” Arend thanked the jury and returned to his seat.

  Jerry Meisner placed his own visual aids on the easel, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I started this trial with a question of identity. Who tragically ended her life? The prosecution has failed to answer that question. And, more importantly, it has failed to prove it was Michael King. For that reason, he is not guilty of first-degree murder. Instead, the prosecution has offered you an invitation, probably the most elaborate you have ever received, brutally packaged. You have been invited to guess that Michael King killed Denise Lee. You have been invited to guess, but your answer to that invitation must be no. You cannot guess, you should not guess, you must not. This matter is far too important to be resolved by guessing. The standard of proof in a crime case is to the exclusion of reasonable doubt. That standard was not met in this case.”

  Meisner’s pattern of movement was similar to Arend’s. He stood behind the lectern, gripping tightly at its sides, as had the prosecutor, but he wandered out to the side of the lectern when he made his conclusions. Point made, he would return to the lectern to begin a fresh argument.

  Meisner explained to the jury that he’d asked them not to presume guilt. They had promised not to do that, and now he was asking them to honor that vow.

  He reminded them that some of them might have heard things about the case from outside the courtroom, and they were to disregard all of that, and consider only the evidence presented there in court when making their decision.

  “I am going to go over the details of the case with you now, but I want you to keep in mind the burden of proof, that the prosecution must prove its case. The defense is not required to prove anything.”

  Indeed, they were not even obligated to present a case of their own—and the defense had not in this case—if they felt the prosecution had failed to prove its case.

  “If the matter of guilt or innocence in this case vacillates and wavers in your mind, then you must declare the defendant not guilty.”

  Meisner recalled voir dire. He remembered talking to them when they were being considered to serve on the jury; they told him that—before they could call a defendant guilty—the evidence would need to be clear, that they would need to understand it thoroughly.

  “‘I have to be sure,’” Meisner quoted one eventual juror as saying. “‘It must be incontrovertible.’”

  Those were the standards that they said they’d use, and those were the standards he wanted them to use now, because the state had failed to prove Michael King had pulled the trigger.

  He reviewed some of the evidence, the statements the jury had heard with its own ears, to demonstrate his point—starting with Trooper Eddie Pope, the arresting officer.

  Pope said that when he pulled up behind the Camaro, with the siren on and
lights flashing, the defendant pulled over.

  “He didn’t try to evade the stop,” Meisner emphasized. “He pulled over!”

  The trooper executed what police called a felony stop, ordered him from his car, put him on the ground, patted him down—did he find a gun or bullets? No. While behind the Camaro, did he see any items thrown from the car? No.

  It wasn’t just that Pope found no gun, no bullets—no one had. How many types of searches had been executed? Individual, canine, line searches. Both sides of the interstate, in the grass, along the tree line, canal, the sewers! According to Detective Christopher Morales, the search for the murder weapon was ongoing. It continued to this day. And, the fact that there was no firearm for this shooting opened up the possibility that someone other than Michael King had fired the fatal shot.

  “The prosecution wants you to guess that Michael King stood next to Denise Lee, placed a gun to her head, and fired. You remember Dr. Daniel Schultz’s testimony. Yet, when King was arrested, the authorities confiscated his pants, his shoes, all of his clothing. They even confiscated his body. They looked and looked and looked, yet they found no blood. Not on him, his shoes, or his clothes.”

  Meisner reminded the jury of what Dr. Schultz had said about blood spatter, how blood exploded outward from a high-velocity gunshot wound. The blood would generally go out the exit wound, he said; in this case, out two exit wounds, taking into consideration her wounded eye. But Dr. Schultz also said the spatter wouldn’t spatter exclusively in those directions. Blood, he’d said, could be thrown out in all directions.

  There were elements of the prosecution’s scenario that did not make sense. Denise Lee, they said, was shot in front of the Camaro—because of the spatter on the car.

  “If Michael King’s Camaro was there at all, it was parked out on the street, far from the grave site,” Meisner said—and yet there were no drag marks on the ground. With the exception of one wound on the victim’s shoulder, there was no indication that the victim’s remains had been dragged. So the prosecution would have them believe that Michael King stood next to his victim and then carried her to the grave site, and did it without getting a single drop of blood on him. “How can there be no blood on his face and hair? That lack of blood also suggests that someone other than Michael King killed Denise Lee,” Meisner said. “And that person has the gun and the bloody clothing.”

  Meisner shifted the jury’s attention to the testimony of Harold Muxlow, who said he thought his cousin was wearing a white shirt when he saw him—the implication being that Michael King changed his shirt, since he was wearing a camouflage-colored shirt when arrested. Yet, no white shirt had ever been found. For all anyone knew, Harold Muxlow could have been mistaken about the white shirt. Michael King, perhaps, had worn a camouflage shirt all day, and still hadn’t gotten any blood on it. “The prosecution wants you to guess that Michael King changed his shirt,” Meisner said. “They want you to believe that Michael King used the shovel he had borrowed to bury his bloody clothes, but the facts don’t back it up.” No white shirt was found. The red underwear, boxer shorts, and bra strap were not buried.

  The fact that no white shirt had been found called into question the believability of Harold Muxlow. Could they really believe anything the man said? Even if you believed he was sincere, it wasn’t hard to imagine he was just flat-out wrong.

  Harold Muxlow had revealed himself on the witness stand as a man who paid little attention to detail: “When Michael King came to his house, did he knock on the door or did he ring the doorbell? Muxlow didn’t know.”

  The defense attorney admitted that the doorbell/knock detail was a small one—even minute—but it was an indication that Muxlow’s testimony regarding the details of King’s visit was suspect. This was a first-degree murder trial. If he got the small details wrong, who was to say whether he got the big ones right?

  Meisner then started in on Robert Salvador, whom he referred to as a “suspect” in the case. Salvador admitted to having a nine-millimeter gun on him on the day of the murder. He admitted to firing it. Later the police confiscated his guns, including his nine. Had the jury heard John Romeo, the Florida crime lab supervisor/firearm expert, talk about testing Robert Salvador’s nine to see if it was the murder weapon? No, they had not. That was missing evidence.

  “Here’s some additional reasonable doubt for you to consider,” Meisner said, and summarized what “we knew” about this suspect Robert Salvador. He was King’s “business partner.” When business slacked off, he would go to King’s house on Sardinia, looking for work. He was a gun enthusiast, owned twenty guns, handled his guns expertly, went to the gun range so frequently that he purchased twenty sessions at a time, owned a nine, fired it expertly. Contrast that with Michael King’s attitude toward guns: didn’t own one, didn’t go to the gun range—indeed, didn’t even know the rules of the gun range. Robert Salvador said he had to talk him through the whole process, even how to get the guns from the parking lot to the range. According to Salvador, King was acting like a man who had never been to a gun range before. King struggled. He even struggled with the directions on how to get to the gun range. Salvador was convinced that King would only end up getting lost, so they’d driven to the range convoy-style.

  According to Salvador, he and King had traded off weapons. Shell casings fell to the ground. In other words, there was no proof that King had fired a nine-millimeter gun at all that day, even at the gun range. The murder weapon—the jurors were expected to conclude—might have belonged to King, but Salvador could have easily framed King.

  Robert Salvador testified that when he last saw Michael King that day, he did not think that King had any bullets.

  “I questioned him about that,” Meisner recalled. He said he was certain that there were no bullets in the gun when he put it in the Camaro. He knew because—for safety reasons—he had removed the magazine from the gun. No bullets. It was Salvador who left the gun range with his own nine-millimeter firearm, at least, and a box of bullets.

  “Now, let’s take a look at Salvador and his contacts with the police. Salvador’s first interaction with police came at two on the morning after the murder.” His statements at that time were a combination of “evasion, concealment, and lies.”

  Meisner repeated that phrase slowly, letting the words linger in the air.

  Robert Salvador was rousted out of bed, admitted to knowing King but offered not a word about being with King for an extended period of time the previous day. They told him that they were dealing with a possible kidnapping; still, he made no mention of his experiences at the gun range.

  “Is this not a material omission?” Meisner asked.

  When Robert Salvador finally did start talking about the gun range, police asked him if he’d been lying earlier. He admitted he had. He should have been treated as a suspect, but he was not. Precious time, when Salvador’s guilt could have been proven, slipped away.

  Was Cortnie Watts ever called to Robert Salvador’s house? She never checked Salvador’s clothing, never checked his storage compartment. Nobody from the police ever searched any of those areas.

  Did police ever take a good look at how flimsy Robert Salvador’s alibi was? He said he had a receipt from Home Depot, a video showing him in Kmart. Meisner said he hadn’t seen them. The jury hadn’t seen them. That was because they didn’t exist. Only the Checkers receipt existed. His alibi only covered the middle of the afternoon, and yet Denise Lee was seen by eyewitnesses hours after that.

  Meisner said, “Judge Economou is going to give you instructions before [you] begin your deliberations in this case. He is going to tell you that you are on your own when it comes to weighing the importance of statements made by the witnesses. I ask you to consider now just how much weight you want to give to Salvador’s testimony.”

  There were questions Meisner wanted the jury to ask themselves: Did Robert Salvador have an accurate memory? Was he honest and straightforward? Was he inconsistent? Was he wrong? Did
he try to deceive?

  Jerry Meisner took off his glasses and spoke slowly. “Robert Salvador was a suspect. He remains a suspect.”

  The defense attorney reminded his audience once again that the burden of proof was entirely on the prosecution. And what did the state prove? Nothing. It had been their job to prove that Michael King put the gun to Denise Lee’s head and pulled the trigger, and they had failed. They could have thoroughly investigated Robert Salvador, but they chose not to.

  The prosecution had used a mocking tone, Meisner said, when claiming they proved their kidnapping/sexual battery case, a tone inappropriate for proceedings such as this.

  “It is up to you to consider every possibility, every scenario. We simply do not know what happened. And no matter what scenario we consider, we should never forget that a woman’s life was ended—that it was tragic—and we must acknowledge her loss and the grief of her family.”

  But, he added that when it came to making a decision during deliberation, the jurors should keep that grief out of their minds. It was not fair to decide a case based on sympathy. Facts mattered. Emotions did not.

  Meisner now dealt with the results of the rape kit administered to the victim. “There was no semen on the anal swab taken in this case,” he said. “No foreign DNA.” The defense attorney sensed that this wasn’t his strongest point and moved on. The boxers, panties, and bra strap were not found buried, he said.

  Bottom line: there was no blood; there was no gun—therefore, there was no case.

  “You’ve received an invitation to guess—but you must not guess. You cannot guess. Your response to their invitation must be no. Thank you.” He’d spoken for about forty-five minutes.